Capitol Notebook

The 1994 election provides a beacon of hope for Republicans in Congress. Voters in the historical mid-term election gave control of the United States House of Representatives to the Republicans for the first time in 40 years. The last time the Republicans gained control of the House was when Dwight David Eisenhower won his overwhelming victory over Adlai Stevenson in 1952.

Senate Republicans also regained control of the Senate from 1953 to 1955, just as the Republicans in the House did. While House Republicans were in the political wilderness for the next 40 years, President Ronald Reagan’s two landslides in 1980 and 1984 gave Republicans control of the Senate for six years.

The reason the U.S. Congress was controlled by the Democrats for most of the 40 years prior to the 1994 election can best be personified by the long-time minority -- emphasis on minority -- leader, Congressman Bob Michel, a very kind and genial man, but a highly ineffective leader. Congressman Michel was perfectly content to accept crumbs from the Democrat spending feast. If the Democrats promised a cut of $1 dollar in federal spending for every $1 tax increase -- a highly unlikely proposal since they normally wanted more tax increases -- you can bet the spending cuts would not materialize following the tax increases because of decades of weak Republican leadership.

Who needs a United States Congress or a United States Constitution when you are Barack Obama? He has now assumed near-dictatorial powers such as trampling on the constitutional and religious freedom rights of the American people; signing into law unconstitutional legislation; making illegal “recess” appointments to his administration; dictating unconstitutional policy through executive action when he cannot get Congress to pass his socialist agenda; and on and on.

Most recently, Obama has tread upon the religious freedom rights guaranteed to the American people by the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution by demanding that religious institutions provide “free” abortifacient drugs, etc. to their employees in their health care plans, which Obama maintains ObamaCare gives his administration the right to do.

Left-winger Bob Beckel -- whose life was recently saved by his fellow "Fox Five" co-host, Eric Bolling (a Rick Perry supporter) when Beckel was choking in a Manhattan restaurant -- should be fired as Donald Trump is urging Fox News to do. The very day that Beckel mentioned the story of Trump urging Fox News to fire him to his fellow co-hosts, Beckel said the a-hole word. Then to round out his day, on Sean Hannity's "Great, Great, Great American Panel," Beckel used the b.s. word. The guy just does not know where to stop.

On July 21, Beckel was caught saying the "F-word" on the live "Fox Five" show. When the next commercial was over, he offered a typical liberal weasel excuse: "The producer tells me that I swore in the last session. I didn't - well sort of did." Then on September 8th, he used the s-word blasting his conservative co-hosts because they were advocating tax cuts, "You gotta be so full of s**t."

A Ronald Reagan/Tip O'Neill moment occurred in a restaurant on the island of Manhattan yesterday. The elderly among us will remember the intense rivalry and feuds which occurred during the day between President Ronald Reagan and the Democrat Speaker of the House from Massachusetts Tip O'Neill. But at night, these two antagonists would famously swap jokes over a mug of beer.

Today's poisonous partisan political atmosphere -- accelerated by Barack Obama's hyper-partisanship -- is far from the comity established between the conservative genial Ronald Reagan and left-wing genial Tip O'Neill. Obama has relentlessly attacked the Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor for his conservative ideas. Now in recent days, Obama has decided to double-down on his attacks against Republicans.